Piece of My Heart (28 page)

“Why are you being so rude? You’ll share a joint with me, but why don’t you want to stay and talk to me?” He handed her the joint again and she took another couple of drags, hoping it would set her at ease, calm her down. What was it about him that disturbed her so? The smile? The sense that behind it lay only darkness?

“What do you want to talk about?” she said, handing the joint back to him and picking up her cigarette again.

“That’s better. I don’t know. Let’s talk about that girl who got killed last week.”

Yvonne remembered McGarrity’s knife, and that he had been wandering the crowds at Brimleigh during the festival. A terrible thought leapt into her mind. Surely he couldn’t have…? She began to feel real fear now, a physical sensation like insects crawling all over her skin. She looked at
The Sleep of Reason
and thought she could see the bats flying around the sleeping man’s head, biting at his neck with vampire teeth. The cat at his feet licked its lips. Yvonne felt an electric tingling in her arms and in the backs of her legs. Insects and ee-lek-triss-attee. God, that hash was strong. And the song had changed.
It wasn’t “China Cat” anymore, but “What’s Become of the Baby?”, a creepy sound collage of disembodied voices and electronic effects. Yvonne shuddered. “Linda?” she heard herself saying in a strange, distant voice that could have been someone else’s. “What about her?”

“You met her. I know you did. Wasn’t she pretty? Sad, isn’t it? But it’s an absurd and arbitrary world,” he said. “That sort of thing could happen to anyone. Anywhere. Any time. The pretty and the plain alike. As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods. They kill us for their sport. Not with a bang but a whimper. One day you’ll understand. Have you read about those people in Los Angeles? The rich people who got butchered? One of them was pregnant, you know. They cut her baby out of her womb. The newspapers are saying they were killed by people like us because they were rich piggies. Wouldn’t you like to do something like that, little Von? Kill the piggies?”

“No. I don’t want to hurt anyone,” Yvonne blurted out. “I believe in love.”

“His scythe cuts down the innocent and the guilty alike. And the dead shall rise incorruptible.”

Yvonne put her hands over her ears. Her head was spinning. “Stop it!”

“Why?”

“Because you’re making me nervous.”

“Why do I make you nervous?”

“I don’t know, but you do.”

“Is it exciting?”

“What?”

He leaned forward. She could see the decay on his front teeth, bared in that arrogant, superior smile. “Being nervous. Does it make you excited?”

“No, it makes me nervous and you excited.”

McGarrity laughed. “You’re not as stupid as you look, are you, little Von? Even when you’re stoned. And here was me thinking the only reason Steve wanted you was for your cunt. But it is a pretty little cunt, isn’t it?”

Yvonne felt herself flushing to the roots of her being with anger and embarrassment. McGarrity was looking at her curiously, as if she were some unusual specimen of plant life. The owls in the Goya print seemed to be whispering in the sleeper’s ear, just as the song’s eerie voices were whispering in her head.

“You don’t need to show me it,” he said. “I’ve already seen it.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve watched you. With Steve.”

Yvonne’s jaw dropped. She stubbed out her cigarette so hard the sparks burned her fingers, and tried to stand up. It wasn’t easy. Somehow or other, she couldn’t believe how, she found herself sitting down again, and McGarrity was beside her, grasping her arm. Hard. His face was so close to hers she could smell smoke and stale cheese on his breath. He let go of her arm and started rolling a cigarette. She thought she should make a run for it, but she felt too heavy to move. The joint, she thought. Opiated hash. It always did that to her, gave her a heavy, drifting, dreamy feeling. But this time the dream was turning into a nightmare.

He reached forward and touched her cheek with his finger just as he had done at the Grove. It felt like a slug. “Yvonne,” he whispered. “What harm can it do? We believe in free love, don’t we? After all, it’s not as if you’re the only one, you know.”

Her chest tightened. “What do you mean?”

“Steve. Do you think you’re the only pretty girl who comes around here to take her clothes off for him?”

Yvonne desperately wanted to get away from McGarrity’s cloying and overbearing presence, but even more desperately, she wanted to know if he was telling the truth. “I don’t believe you,” she said.

“Yvonne: Fridays and Saturdays. You’re just his weekend hippie. Tuesdays and Wednesdays it’s the lovely Denise. Let me see now, who’s Monday, Thursday and Sunday? Is it the same one all three days, or is it three different ones?”

He was looking at her with that mocking smile on his face again.

“Stop it!” she said. “I won’t believe you. I want to go home.” She tried to rise again and proved a little more successful this time. She was still dizzy, though, and soon fell back.

McGarrity stood up and started pacing up and down, muttering to himself. She didn’t know if it was T.S. Eliot or the Book of Revelation. She could see the bulge at the front of his jeans, and she knew he was getting more excited every second. She didn’t trust him, knew he had that knife somewhere. Unless…Christ, he had probably had his way with Linda and killed her and got rid of the knife. That was why he didn’t have it. Yvonne’s mind was spinning. Why didn’t Steve and the others come home? What were they doing? Had he killed them all? Was that it? Were they all lying upstairs in their rooms in pools of blood with flies buzzing around? The ideas flashed and cracked electrically in her brain, bouncing around her mind like the thunderstorm in the painting.

Yvonne sensed that now was the time, while he was distracted. She went through it quickly in her head first, visualizing herself do it. She would have to be fast, and that would be the hardest part. She was still disoriented because of the hash he had drugged her with. She would have only one chance. Get to the door. Get outside fast. How did it open? Yale
lock. In or out? In. So twist to the left, pull and run. There would be people out there, in the street, in the park. It was still light outside. She could make it. Twist to the left, pull and run.

When McGarrity was at the far end of the room, by the window, his back turned to her, Yvonne summoned up all her energy and made a dash for the door. She didn’t know if he was after her or not. She bounced off the walls down the hallway, reached the door, twisted the Yale and pulled. It opened. Daylight flooded her like warm honey. She stumbled a bit on the top step but ran down the garden path and out of the gate as fast as she could. She didn’t look round, didn’t even listen for his footsteps following her. She didn’t know where she was running. All she knew was that she had to run, run, run for her life.

13

S
uperintendent Gervaise had called another progress meeting in the incident room, as the boardroom had now become known, for early Wednesday morning. The team lounged around the polished table sipping coffee from Styrofoam cups and chatting about last night’s television, or Boro’s prospects for the weekend’s football. The corkboards had acquired more crime scene photographs, and the names and details of various people connected with the victim were scrawled across the whiteboard.

Annie Cabbot sat next to Winsome and DC Galway, on loan from Harrogate CID, and tried to digest what Banks had told her over an early breakfast in the Golden Grill. The presence in the area of two people connected with the Mad Hatters, the band on whom Nick Barber had been writing a major feature, seemed too much of a coincidence for her, too. She knew far less about the group and its history than Banks did, but even she could see there were a few skeletons in those closets worth shaking up a bit.

Superintendent Gervaise clicked in on her shiny black heels, smoothed her navy pinstripe skirt and sat down at the head
of the table, gracing everyone with a warm smile. A chorus of “Good morning, ma’am” rose up from the assembled officers.

She turned first to Stefan Nowak and asked if there was anything more from forensics.

“Not really,” said Stefan. “Naturally, there are numerous fibres and hairs remaining to be analyzed. The place was supposed to be thoroughly cleaned after each set of guests, but nobody’s that thorough. We’ve got a list of the last ten renters from the owner, so we’ll check against their samples first. It was a busy summer. Some of them live as far afield as Germany and Norway. It could take a long time.”

“Prints?”

“The poker was wiped clean, and there are nothing but blurs around the door and conservatory entrance. Naturally, we’ve found almost as many fingerprints as we have other trace evidence, and it’ll all have to be sifted, compared to existing records. As I said, it will take time.”

“What about DNA?”

“Well, we did find traces of semen on the bedsheets, but the DNA matches that of the victim. We’re trying to separate out any traces of female secretion, but no luck so far. Apparently he used condoms and flushed them down the toilet.” He glanced towards Annie for confirmation. She nodded.

“We know who this…companion…was, don’t we, DI Cabbot?”

“Yes,” said Annie. “Unless there was someone else, which I’d say he hardly had time for, Kelly Soames admits to sleeping with the victim on two occasions: Wednesday evening, which was her night off, and Friday afternoon, between the hours of two and four, when she rearranged a dental appointment so she could visit his cottage.”

“Resourceful girl,” Superintendent Gervaise reflected. “And Dr. Glendenning estimates time of death between six and eight on Friday?”

“He says he can’t be any more precise than that,” replied Stefan.

“Not earlier?”

“No, ma’am.”

“All right,” said Superintendent Gervaise. “Let’s move on. Anything from the house to house?”

“Nothing positive, ma’am,” said Winsome. “It was a miserable night even before the power cut, and most people shut their curtains tight and stayed in.”

“Except the killer.”

“Yes, ma’am. In addition to the couple in the Cross Keys and the New Zealander in the youth hostel, who thought she saw a light-coloured car heading up the hill away from Moorview Cottage between seven-thirty and seven-forty-five, we have one sighting of a dark-coloured four-by-four going up the same lane at about six-twenty, before the power cut, and a white van at about eight o’clock, while the electricity was off. According to our witnesses, though, neither of these stopped by the cottage.”

“Not very promising, is it?” said Gervaise.

“Well, one of them could have stopped farther up the lane and walked back. There are plenty of passing places.”

“I suppose so,” Superintendent Gervaise conceded, but it was clear her heart wasn’t in it.

“Oh,” Winsome added, “someone says he saw a figure running across a field just after dark, before the lights went out.”

“Any description?”

“No, ma’am. He was closing his curtains, and he thought
he saw this dark figure. He assumed it was someone jogging and ignored it.”

“Fat, thin, tall, short, child, man, woman?”

“Sorry, ma’am. Just a dark figure.”

“Which direction was the figure running?” Banks asked.

Winsome turned to face him. “The shortcut from Fordham to Lyndgarth, sir, across the fields and by the river. It’s a popular jogging route.”

“Yes, but probably not after dark. Not in that sort of weather.”

“You’d be surprised, DCI Banks,” said Superintendent Gervaise. “Some people take their exercise very seriously indeed. Do you know how many calories there are in a pint of beer?”

Everyone laughed. Banks wasn’t convinced. Vic Greaves didn’t drive, so Adams had said, but it wasn’t very far from his cottage to Fordham, and that would have been the best route to take. It cut the journey almost in half. He made a note to get Winsome to talk to this witness again, or to do it himself.

“What about this Jack Tanner character?” Gervaise asked. “He sounded like a possible.”

“His alibi holds water,” said Templeton. “We’ve talked to six members of his darts team and every one of them swears he was in the King’s Head playing darts from about six o’clock until ten.”

“And I don’t suppose he was drinking Britvic orange, either,” said Gervaise. “Maybe we ought to get Traffic to keep an eye on Mr. Tanner.”

Everyone laughed.

“So do we have
any
promising lines of inquiry yet?” Gervaise asked.

“Chris Adams suggested that Nick Barber had a cocaine problem,” Banks said. “I’m not convinced, but I’ve put in a request for the Met drugs squad to look into it. But there’s something else.” Banks told her about Vic Greaves’s breakdown and the drowning death of Robin Merchant at Swainsview Lodge thirty-five years ago, and the feature Nick Barber had been writing for
Mojo
.

“It’s a bit far-fetched, isn’t it?” said Gervaise, when he had finished. “I’ve always been a bit suspicious of events from so far in the past reaching forward into the present. Sounds like the stuff of television. I’m more inclined towards the most obvious solution–someone closer to hand, a jilted lover, cheated business partner, whatever. In this case, perhaps some disgruntled drug dealer. Besides, I take it this Merchant business was settled at the time?”

“After a fashion,” said Banks.

“What are you suggesting?”

“DS Templeton dug up the paperwork, and it looks to have been a rather cursory investigation,” Banks said. “After all, a major rock star and a peer of the realm were involved.”

“Meaning?”

Christ, Banks thought, do I have to spell it out for you? “Ma’am, I should imagine nobody wanted a scandal that might in any way touch the establishment and make it to the House,” he said. “There’d been enough of that sort of thing over the previous few years with Profumo, Kim Philby and the rest. As it was, the tabloids no doubt had a field day. Sex and drug orgies at Lord Jessop’s country manor. A deeper investigation might have unearthed things nobody wanted brought to the surface.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Banks, this is paranoid conspiracy rubbish,” said Superintendent Gervaise. “Honestly, I’d have thought better of you.”

“Well,” Banks went on, unfazed, “the victim’s personal belongings are all missing, including his laptop and mobile, and he was definitely silenced for good.”

“We do know that he had a laptop and mobile?”

“The girl, Kelly Soames, says she saw them when she visited him, ma’am,” said Annie.

Gervaise frowned as if she had a bad taste in her mouth and tapped her pen on the blank pad in front of her. “People have been killed or beaten up for a mobile phone or less. I’m still not convinced about this girl, DI Cabbot. She could be lying. Talk to her again, see if her story’s consistent.”

“Surely you don’t really believe that she might have killed him?” Annie asked.

“All I’m saying is that it’s possible.”

“But she was working in the pub at the time. There are plenty of witnesses to vouch for her.”

“Except when she was supposed to be going to the dentist’s on Friday afternoon, but was in actuality in bed with a man she’d only just met, a man who was found dead not long after. The girl can obviously lie with the best of them. All I’m saying is it’s suspicious, DI Cabbot. And the MO fits. Crime of passion. Maybe he slighted her, asked her to do something she found repugnant? Perhaps she found out he had another girlfriend. Maybe she left the pub for a few moments later on, in the dark. It wouldn’t have taken long.”

“That would involve some premeditation, not a crime of passion, ma’am,” said Annie, “and the odds are that she would have also got some blood on her.”

“Perhaps this sense of being wronged built up in her until she snapped when the lights went out and seized her opportunity before they got organized with candles? I don’t know. All I’m saying is that it’s possible, and that it makes a good deal
more sense than any conspiracy rooted deep in the past. Either way, push her a bit harder, DI Cabbot. Do I make myself clear? And DS Nowak?”

“Yes, ma’am?”

“Have a word with the pathologist, Dr. Glendenning. See if you can push him a bit on time of death, find out if there’s any possibility that the victim could have been killed around four rather than between six and eight.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Stefan gave Annie a quick glance. They both knew Dr. Glendenning could not be pushed on anything.

“And let’s have the girl’s father in,” Superintendent Gervaise went on. “He disappeared for long enough around the time of the murder. If he found out that this Barber character was having casual sex with his daughter, he might have taken the law into his own hands.”

“Ma’am?” said Annie.

“What, DI Cabbot?”

“It’s just that I sort of promised. I mean, I indicated to the girl, to Kelly, that is, that we had no need to tell her father about what happened. Apparently he’s a bit of a disciplinarian, and it could go badly for her.”

“All the more reason to have a close look at him. It might already have gone badly for Nicholas Barber. Have you thought of that?”

“No, ma’am, you don’t understand. It’s her I’m worried about. Kelly. He’ll hit the roof.”

Superintendent Gervaise regarded Annie coldly. “I understand perfectly well what you’re saying, DI Cabbot. It serves her right for jumping into bed with every man she sees, then, doesn’t it?”

“With all due respect, there’s no evidence to suggest that
she does anything of the kind. She just happened to like Nick Barber.”

Superintendent Gervaise glared at Annie. “I’m not going to argue sexual mores, especially with you, DI Cabbot. Ask around. Find out. The girl must have had other partners. Find them. And find out if anyone’s ever paid her for it.”

“But, ma’am,” Annie protested. “That’s an insult. Kelly Soames isn’t a prostitute, and this case isn’t about her sex life.”

“It is if I say it is.”

“I talked to Calvin Soames,” Banks cut in.

Superintendent Gervaise looked over at him. “And?”

“In my opinion, he didn’t know what was going on between the victim and his daughter.”

“In your opinion?”

“Yes,” said Banks.

“He couldn’t have been hiding it?”

“He could, I suppose,” Banks admitted, “but if we’re assuming that he did it out of anger or righteous indignation, I think he would have been far more likely to be wearing his heart on his sleeve. He would have been angry when I was questioning his daughter about Barber, but he wasn’t.”

“Did you suggest they had slept together?”

“No,” said Banks. “I merely asked her about her dealings with Barber as a customer in the Cross Keys. While her father was watching us, I was watching him, and I believe that if he’d known there was more to it than that, it would have shown in his expression, his behaviour or in something he said. In my opinion, he’s not the sort of man accustomed to being sly.”

“And it didn’t?”

“No.”

“Very well. I’d be more convinced, however, if I could witness his reaction to being told what his daughter had been up to.”

“But, ma’am–”

“That’s enough, DI Cabbot. I want you to pursue this line of inquiry until I’m satisfied there either is or isn’t something to it.”

“It’ll be too late for Kelly Soames then,” Annie muttered under her breath.

“DS Templeton?” said Banks.

Templeton sat up. “Sir?”

“Did you manage to locate Detective Sergeant Enderby?”

Templeton shifted uneasily in his chair. “Er…yes, sir, I did.” He looked at Superintendent Gervaise while he was speaking.

“What is this?” she asked.

“Well, ma’am,” Templeton said, “DCI Banks asked me to track down the detective who investigated the Robin Merchant drowning.”

“This is the drug addict who fell into the swimming pool thirty-five years ago?”

“Yes, ma’am, though I’m not certain that he was actually an addict. Not technically speaking.”

Superintendent Gervaise sighed theatrically, ran her hand over her layered blonde hair, then looked at Banks. “Very well, DCI Banks. I see you’re hell-bent and determined on following this up, so I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. I’ll bear with you for the moment and assume there might be something in it. But DI Cabbot sticks with the Soameses. Okay?”